This report gives a brief summary of the textual analysis of the submissions to the discussion on Invasive Species by the Environemntal Audit Select Committee.

Summary of Key Points

Frequency Analysis

The comments had an average of 94 words in each. There was an average Flesch readability score of 60 suggesting readers needed to be educated to at least a UK Grade Level of 10 to understand the comments.

summary(get_each_comment_length(EAC.comments)$Length)
##    Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
##    4.00   27.75   59.00   94.16  113.00 3265.00
display_term_frequencies(EAC.frequencies, "EAC Survey", 15 )
## [1] "All terms good to go"

The most common adjectives, phrases and pairs of words are displayed below. People tend to express their emotions through the adjectives they use, and in this case “red”, “invasive”, and “grey” being used so often relate to the main concern of the large proportion of participants discussing red and grey squirrels. However, the phrases “honey bee”, “eu directive”, and “himalayan balsam” also show a range of different species and topics outside of squirrels was being discussed over the week.

A network of the most frequent consecutive word pairs (bigrams) is shown below. “grey squirrels”, “red squirrels”, and “invasive species” are the most common word pairs in the dataset. A cluster comprising of phrases such as “alien/invasive/native species” show a difference of terminology used in the discussion, while another cluser of phrases surrounding squirrels referrs to the primary debate. “Japanese knotweed” and “climate change” are also common bigrams and suggest alternative discussions that were ongoing.

Topic Extraction

A plot of words most associated with one of 7 topics are shown below.

Topic model visualisations are split into two sections:

This visualisation is interactive, hover over each topic number to view the words in each topic, or select each word to view which topics it appears.

https://nicolednisbett.github.io/EAC/#topic=0&lambda=0.60&term=

Sentiment Analysis

The wordcloud below gives the most popular words associated with positive and negative sentiments in the survey. Specific comments which are associated with the most popular sentiments are listed below.

The NRC sentiment lexicon uses categorical scale to measure 2 sentiments (positive and negative), and 8 emotions (anger, anticipation, disgust, trust, joy, sadness, fear, and suprise). Examples of words and comments in these sentiment categories are below. In this debate, the majority of submissions were equally negative and positive but also categorised as trust, sadness, and fear.

Hover over the plot below to read the content of the comments within each sentiment category.

## [1] 7
## 
##        anger anticipation      disgust         fear          joy 
##   0.10092638   0.09605071   0.07996099   0.11116529   0.07898586 
##     negative     positive      sadness     surprise        trust 
##   0.12432960   0.12774256   0.10531448   0.06874695   0.10677718

An example of a comment categorised as negative

Not helping an injured animal is cruelty. I am so sick of hearing about animals in Britain being left to die or killed (sorry “culled”) for no reason whatsoever. Badgers are a native animal species but they get killed routinely. What they hell is wrong with the UK government (apart from the obvious)? Britain is a tiny island with very little wildlife left, between habitat destruction (by humans) and government sponsored slaughter. Leave wild animals alone and help them when they are hurt - especially as their injuries are likely to have come from contact with a human.

An example of a comment categorised as positive

This planet is indeed for all species and all species have their place - and in their own native habitats provide a valuable role in maintaining ecological balance. Human intervention across the board has devastated this and I would therefore argue that we have a moral duty to redress the balance

An example of a comment categorised as trust

I now urge the goverment to show compassion , take scientific facts into account not myths or lies and make UK grey Squirrel rescue and release exempt from the Invasive species order. People have had enough of wrongly blaming Grey’s for any red decline. Grey’s are an important part of Brittish wildlfe and People’s wellbeing . Compassion is not a crime

An example of a comment categorised as sadness

Definitely No There needs to be a national cull they are disease ridden They are a public Health risk after all Squirrel diseases that humans can catch include: Salmonellosis. Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases. Tularemia. Leptospirosis. Rabies. Bubonic Plague ( Black Death ) TB And they are killing all of or Song Birds as well as other wildlife And destroying all of the trees They are killing of the Red squirrels They cause damage to houses Did you know if they get into your attic and start a fire your are not insured for your loss
We need to do the right thing and get them out of this county for good

An example of a comment categorised as fear

Tackling an invasive plant is far different to a so-called invasive animal. One has a central nervous system, is capable of feeling fear, pain and compassion. It’s humans that are the ones who are invasive and destructive. We destroyed, and continue to ruin the space our native animals need. We brought the grey squirrels here and now because we deem them to be a pain we decide to kill them off?! It’s unfortunately our answer to everything these days.